Ownership versus Management Effects on Performance in Family and Founder Companies: A Bayesian Analysis

There are ongoing debates in the literature concerning the performance of family firms: some studies find superior performance among these companies, others find negative or neutral per-formance effects. In this research we employ agency theory to argue that the effects of family ownership vs. family management will be quite different: the former is expected to contribute positively to performance, the latter is argued to erode performance. Previous studies, due to problems of omitted variables or multicollinearity have been unable to distinguish these effects. Using a Bayesian approach that avoids these problems, we find that whereas family and founder ownership are associated with superior performance, the results for family management and even founder management are far more ambiguous. Our results have implications regarding the own-ership and management of lone founder and family firms.Family firms; lone founder firms; performance; Bayesian analysis; agency theory

Combler le « vide institutionnel » : Le comportement social et les performances des entreprises familiales comparés à ceux des autres entreprises des marchés émergents dans le secteur des hautes technologies.

Les entreprises familiales (EF) sont réputées prendre un soin particulier de leurs employés, avec l’objectif de créer une « communauté » interne très soudée. Leurs relations et contacts avec leurs partenaires extérieurs seraient aussi plus approfondis et personnels. Ces deux attitudes favoriseraient la viabilité d’une entreprise qui doit faire vivre la famille propriétaire, ainsi que les générations suivantes. Ces liens sociaux nous paraissent pouvoir compenser le manque de capital, de produits et d’infrastructure propre aux économies émergentes dynamiques. Cette étude, menée dans un secteur très compétitif de marché émergent, les entreprises de haute technologie en Corée, examine trois points majeurs :(1) Les relations internes et les liens avec l’extérieur sont plus développés dans les EF que dans les autres. (2) Ces relations améliorent la performance des secteurs de haute technologie dans les marchés émergents, pour lesquels il est indispensable, du fait de leur nature compétitive complexe et évolutive, de disposer d’une expertise pointue et d’un capital social à l’intérieur comme à l’extérieur de l’entreprise. (3) Les performances des EF sont plus dépendantes de ces relations communautaires et de ces liens avec l’extérieur que celles des autres entreprises, parce que dans ce cadre personnel et intime, les employés et les partenaires extérieurs ont généralement tendance à récompenser la générosité, ou au contraire à punir l’égoïsme, d’une famille propriétaire qu’ils voient à l’oeuvre de leurs propres yeux. Nos observations empiriques confirment la plupart de ces hypothèses de façon significative.We argue that family businesses (FBs) will tend to treat their employees with unusual consideration to form a cohesive internal “community”. They are also expected to develop deeper, more extensive “connections” or relationships with outside stakeholders. Both behaviors should increase the viability of a business intended to support an owning family and its later generations. Such social linkages, we believe, may compensate for the lack of capital, product and labor institutional infrastructures in dynamic emerging economies. This survey study of a most challenging emerging market sector, namely, Korean high technology businesses, largely supports these expectations

Competitive Rationales: Beneath the Surface of Competitive Behavior

Competitive dynamics research has focused on studying whether rivals are able and likely to carry out competitive actions, typically by examining indirect reasons such as characteristics of the actions themselves, the firms involved, or the competitive context. We explore why rivals initiate a specific competitive action at a particular time and situation. Drawing from the philosophy of action literature, we introduce the concept of competitive rationales to examine the primary reasons that cause tactical actions. Given the rapid exchanges characterizing tactical competitive dynamics, we conducted an inductive, multicase study to explore the reasons behind over 800 discrete tactical decisions carried out by 9 professional basketball coaches during 15 basketball games. To garner insight, we develop a conceptual framework revealing their types and scope. Even during intense head-to-head rivalry, most rationales were not rivalrous but were instead organizational—to optimize resource use, strategic consistency, and reputation—or social—to manage relationships. Moreover, the three main types of rationales varied in scope, extending beyond immediate competitive situations and rivals to address longer term, strategic outcomes, and assorted stakeholders. Thus, our analysis reveals these rationales to be complex and potentially difficult for rivals to decipher. It also recasts each component of the dominant awareness-motivation-capability (AMC) model of rivalry, suggesting that awareness is challenged by subtle rationales, motivation drives not only action but also forbearance, and capability is both a requirement and product of action

A genomic analysis of meiosis in Drosophila melanogaster

Meiosis is a specialized form of cell division in which a single diploid cell undergoes one round of genome duplication followed by two rounds of cell division to produce four haploid gametes. In most organisms, including Drosophila melanogaster, programmed double-strand breaks (DSBs) are created during meiosis that are typically repaired by one of two mechanisms: crossing over, which involves the exchange of flanking markers, or noncrossover gene conversion (NCO), which copies short segments of DNA from a homologous chromosome to repair the break. Crossing over is necessary for the proper segregation of homologous chromosomes at the first meiotic division, a process facilitated by the synaptonemal complex (SC), a large, multi-protein structure that holds homologs together during meiosis. Chromosomes that fail to crossover may not segregate properly, resulting in aneuploid gametes. In many organisms, including humans, two forces primarily control the distribution of crossovers along the chromosome arm. The strongly polar centromere effect functions to reduce the frequency of centromere-proximal crossovers, while interference ensures that crossovers occurring on the same chromosome arm are widely spaced. It is unknown if these forces control the distribution of NCOs as well. In addition, while it is known that Drosophila mutants that fail to construct SC cannot repair DSBs by crossing over, it is unknown if these breaks can be repaired as NCOs. Finally, the forces that prevent crossing over are of interest as well. In Drosophila, multiply inverted balancer chromosomes are used either to suppress recombination or to prevent the recovery of recombinant chromosomes. While it is known that inversion breakpoints themselves suppress nearby crossover events it is unclear over what distance they act. In this work, I used whole-genome sequencing to investigate recombination in D. melanogaster. First, I precisely positioned CO and NCO events after a single round of meiosis in 196 individual wild-type males. While I found that CO distribution appears to be controlled, as expected, by the centromere effect and interference, NCOs surprisingly do not seem to respond to these same controls. In addition, I looked for evidence of NCOs in SC-deficient flies and recovered a single NCO event, suggesting that while rare, repair by NCO is possible in these mutants. These data also allowed me to identify novel meiotic events such as transposable element (TE)-mediated copy-number variations, which included evidence of recurrent CNV formation, which is known to contribute to disease in humans. Finally, I identified the precise genomic location of the majority of the inversion breakpoints of several of the most commonly used X and 3rd chromosome balancers in Drosophila. This knowledge allows us to understand over what distance these breakpoints suppress crossing over. This analysis also allowed me to identify several instances of double crossovers, demonstrating that the mechanism by which balancers suppress exchange with their normal-sequence homologs is incomplete

A transboundary political ecology of air pollution: slow violence on Thailand's margins

This study develops a transboundary political ecology of air pollution to show how its spatially and socially unequal distribution constitutes a form of slow violence among already marginal sections of society. Recent research on transboundary air pollution in Southeast Asia and globally has mainly focused on the supranational or regional scale of environmental governance without taking into proper account the socially differentiated impacts of these cross-border flows of environmental harm at lower organisational scales. Air pollution in Thailand, which ranks amongst the worst in the world, generates spill-over effects across sub-national borders that disproportionately impact the urban and rural poor. We examine the drivers of the three major sources of air pollution in Thailand: vehicular emissions, agricultural emissions and industrial emissions to direct attention toward the barriers and opportunities for collaborative governance in urban, peri-urban and rural settings. The article argues that administrative fragmentation and the protection of vested economic interests by Thai business and political elites have compromised transboundary governance of the air while adding to socio-spatial inequalities and environmental injustices. We recommend legislative reforms centred on cross-sectoral and cross-jurisdictional cooperation to provide redress for the slow violence perpetrated against marginal citizens in the governance of air pollution

Rapid acceleration of electrons in the magnetosphere by fast-mode MHD waves

During major megnetic storms, enhanced flux of relativistic electrons in the inner magnetosphere have been observed to correleated with ULF waves. The enhancements can take place over a period of several hours. In order to account for such a rapid generation of relativistic electrons, we examine the mechanism of transit-time acceleration of electrons by low-frequency fast-mode MHD waves, here the assumed form of ULF waves. Calcaulations of the acceleration timescales in the model show that fast-mode waves in the Pc4 to Pc5 frequency range, with typically observed wave amplitudes 10--20 nT, can accelerate the seed electrons to energies of order MeV in a period of a few hours.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, Accepted to J. Geophys. Re

An exploration of the experiences and utility of functional electrical stimulation for foot drop in people with multiple sclerosis

Purpose: Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is effective in improving walking in people with multiple sclerosis (MS) with foot drop. There is limited research exploring people’s experiences of using this device. This study aims to explore the utility, efficacy, acceptability, and impact on daily life of the device in people with MS. Methods: An interpretative phenomenological approach was employed. Ten participants who had used FES for 12 months were interviewed. Transcripts were analysed, and emergent themes identified. Results: Nine participants continued to use the device. Three relevant super-ordinate themes were identified; impact of functional electrical stimulation, sticking with functional electrical stimulation, and autonomy and control. Participants reported challenges using the device; however, all reported positive physical and psychological benefits. Intrinsic and external influences such as; access to professional help, the influence of others, an individual’s ability to adapt, and experiences using the device, influenced their decisions to continue with the device. A thematic model of these factors was developed. Conclusions: This study has contributed to our understanding of people with MS experiences of using the device and will help inform prescribing decisions and support the continued, appropriate use of FES over the longer term

Ownership versus Management Effects on Performance in Family and Founder Companies: A Bayesian Analysis

There are ongoing debates in the literature concerning the performance of family firms: some studies find superior performance among these companies, others find negative or neutral per-formance effects. In this research we employ agency theory to argue that the effects of family ownership vs. family management will be quite different: the former is expected to contribute positively to performance, the latter is argued to erode performance. Previous studies, due to problems of omitted variables or multicollinearity have been unable to distinguish these effects. Using a Bayesian approach that avoids these problems, we find that whereas family and founder ownership are associated with superior performance, the results for family management and even founder management are far more ambiguous. Our results have implications regarding the own-ership and management of lone founder and family firms

Ownership versus Management Effects on Performance in Family and Founder Companies: A Bayesian Analysis

There are ongoing debates in the literature concerning the performance of family firms: some studies find superior performance among these companies, others find negative or neutral per-formance effects. In this research we employ agency theory to argue that the effects of family ownership vs. family management will be quite different: the former is expected to contribute positively to performance, the latter is argued to erode performance. Previous studies, due to problems of omitted variables or multicollinearity have been unable to distinguish these effects. Using a Bayesian approach that avoids these problems, we find that whereas family and founder ownership are associated with superior performance, the results for family management and even founder management are far more ambiguous. Our results have implications regarding the own-ership and management of lone founder and family firms

VizWiz

The lack of access to visual information like text labels, icons,and colors can cause frustration and decrease independence for blind people. Current access technology uses automatic approaches to address some problems in this space, but the technology is error-prone, limited in scope, and quite expensive. In this paper, we introduce VizWiz, a talking application for mobile phones that offers a new alternative to answering visual questions in nearly real-time—asking multiple people on the web. To support answering questions quickly, we introduce a general approach for intelligently recruiting human workers in advance called quikTurkit so that workers are available when new questions arrive. A field deployment with 11 blind participants illustrates that blind people can effectively use VizWiz to cheaply answer questions in their everyday lives, highlighting issues that automatic approaches will need to address to be useful. Finally, we illustrate the potential of using VizWiz as part of the participatory design of advanced tools by using it to build and evaluate VizWiz::LocateIt, an interactive mobile tool that helps blind people solve general visual search problems